Thanks must go to the gods of metaphor, for it was presumably they who sent the lightning that forced François Hollande's plane to turn back mid-journey to Berlin on Tuesday afternoon. This being rain-sodden reality rather than heightened drama, the French president had better luck on a second flight to meet chancellor Angela Merkel – but even so, you couldn't have asked for a more perfect omen. Because there are those who view any mission to save the euro as cursed. Plenty more see policymaking in the crisis-hit eurozone as a lot of Sturm with a hefty dollop of Drang. And then there are the more excitable European politicians who would describe the fate of the single currency as hanging on a war of ideas: between left and right, between austerity and growth, and between the newly elected, idealistic Mr Hollande and battle-hardened German pragmatist Mrs Merkel. Stormy indeed.

If only things were so stark. Certainly, a shift of emphasis and policy is discernible, both in terms of the people making decisions and the economic and political backdrop they are now working against. But the continent-wide spending cuts are not about to be overturned in favour of a raft of policies designed to encourage growth – sadly. Nor, unfortunately, are stricken southern members of the euro about to receive the relief they need from the wrong-headed austerity programmes they have been forced to follow with such disastrous economic and social effect.

Plainly, the economic policies followed by eurozone ministers and officials are not working. First, their governments had the option in the summer of 2010 to go for sustained and substantial fiscal stimulus; they didn't take it. The result was underlined, with the eurozone just avoiding its own double-dip recession – and that too largely because of strong growth for German exports. The domestic economy of the single-currency area remains in dire shape, with Spain and Italy both shrinking and France flatlining. Second, when it comes to warding off financial contagion, the euro club has finally cobbled together a firewall of pledged money, to be called upon if another nation ended up in serious trouble. The trouble is, Spain and Italy are already in financial turmoil – with their banks in desperate need of extra cash and their governments struggling to raise funds from markets – and yet very few analysts or financiers have much faith in the firewall. Finally, for the nations already forced on to financial life support, Brussels (with the IMF) prescribed a combination of drastic cuts, radical changes to welfare systems and labour laws, and a fire sale of public assets. In Greece, the guinea pig for all this, the result has been to seal a national economic depression, coupled with widespread unrest and violence – and to destroy support for the political mainstream. A failure on all counts.

So there is plenty of reason to hope that Mr Hollande has some substance behind his stirring rhetoric about the need for growth. The French president can point to the fall of 10 euro-area administrations since 2008, sky-high unemployment and even to Mrs Merkel's own poor showing in this weekend's elections in North Rhine-Westphalia. Yet his policies so far amount to slowing down the pace at which France reduces its (relatively small) budget deficit, and taxing wealth in order to create more jobs. At an international level, he wants to adulterate the pure austerity his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, agreed with Mrs Merkel. But this is merely to slow progress towards the cliff edge, when what is needed is a U-turn. What the continent really needs to go for is an outright fiscal stimulus, of the kind even Mrs Merkel agreed to in 2009 (which gave German carmakers such a shot in the arm). In the crisis zones of Greece, Portugal and Ireland, the eurozone needs to impose a sharp reduction in the value of public debt. Preceding that, the euro club should set up an emergency pool to forcibly recapitalise banks, in return for European public equity stakes. Drastic? Yes. But the euro area's existential crisis will not be alleviated by rhetoric, however cheering.